DANGER HOURS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 232, 1 October 1929, Page 19

DANGER HOURS.

FRENCH GENDARME'S

ANALYSIS.

TWILIGHT AND AFTER LUNCH.

Outside Paris and the cities and larger towns in France the motorist speeds untrammelled and at the risk of hie own neck. But the Department of the Oise seems to have a gendarme who takes a professional interest in his job. Besides employing mechanical devices to warn foolhardy motorists against the hairpin turns that are so common in France, he has brought a statistical flair to his task. The results of his careful notes, now published, have analysed the psychological condition of the average motorist. This Oise gendarme noAV tells him that he usually gets into trouble around twilight. This is the time when moet of the accidents occur. Next comes the early afternoon, and after that the hour just before the noonday lunch. At dark the motorist is trying to make up time and reach his destination in too great a hurry; in the afternoon hehaii,. after the meagre "petit dejeuner" with which all France begins the day, lunched too well, having imbibed too freely of the champagne for which the surrounding departments are famous, or in his haste in the forenoon to reach an inn wjiere the cellar is said to contain a few bottles of a choice brand. Of course, the Oise gendarme kept track of the months in which all these causes aro most potent. French vacations begin in July and extend, whetgver possible, until October, eo that in their order the months of July, August, September and October make the largest contributions to the hospitals and ecrapheaps as well as to the- cemeteries of France.